"Hope is my catalyst."

“My life is so swingy at times. I literally go back and forth from feeling good and bad randomly.”

Well, I am going back to using the anime pictures again (for the time being). I did not like how plain the last post looked. They are mostly for fun, but having the pictures at least break up the wall of text for each blog post. So they are back for now.

Anyway, solving the mystery that is my life gets more and more grueling. But I am starting to narrow things down. I am beginning to understand myself a whole lot better. I kind of have to, as my main goal is to move forward in life. To head toward the next stage entails knocking down the obstacles ahead of me, but the major one I cannot overlook is myself.

In particular, I suspect that I probably have bipolar disorder. Now, this is nothing official. Self-diagnosing is dangerous, so I would in fact need a proper diagnosis from a medical professional, but the more I research it… Well, without getting too technical, it explains a lot about who I am.

In fact, I guess you could say that it literally matches up with my “inconsistency” for this whole time. Granted, I know I always talk about my various mood swings throughout these blog posts. I tell people all of the time that I suffer from mood swings, but now I wonder if that is really all there is to it on the surface.

And now, I just wonder if my dad has bipolar disorder as well. Without going too in-depth here, my dad was all over the place growing up. He had a lot of random days. And by random, I mean he would be incredibly happy and nice one day, and then there were other days you hoped it was not raining outside so you had an excuse to be away from the house.

My dad was Mr. Nice Guy when he was feeling jovial. He was the bad guy when he felt like yelling, frightening me a lot as a kid to the point where I found myself just cowering in fear from him a lot when he was like this.

As I have gotten older, my dad has mellowed out. The thing is, though, this is all due to the medication he has to drug himself with on a daily basis now. He takes so many pills, for so many different health problems, that he just has too much medicine flowing through his system to feel anything extreme. He is very chill by comparison to the childhood father I knew back then.

I guess this partially feeds into the stigma I have toward taking pills. My dad obviously has to take all of those pills because he has no choice now, and I wonder if I am destined for the same path at this rate.

It all scares me.

With my dad, we called his extreme shifts in demeanor mood swings as well. And looking back at it all, I think my mom just did not want to say anything beyond that. My dad was my dad.

My mom always told me it was just a cultural thing back in Vietnam, that to be deemed “crazy” was super taboo. With this train of thought, it makes sense why we never would call my dad bipolar or anything like that. That would mean he has something really wrong with him, right?

As for me, as someone on this personal journey toward figuring it all out, I want answers. The logical thing would be to seek professional help. An official diagnosis would label me the right kind of things I would need to be labeled, but what would it change unless I ended up higher than a kite stuffing my face with pills each day?

Why do I bring this all up now?

Just lately, lately… I am feeling more extreme emotions. This up-and-down feeling, back and forth… It all makes one’s head spin!

A Roller Coaster of EmotionsI accept that, barring anything extreme, this is how my life is going to play out for the rest of my days.

A roller coaster of emotions. A nonstop ride that has no defined track ahead of it. It can dip. It can climb. It can swoop around and twist. It is, in many regards, unpredictable.

Which is, unsurprisingly, very bipolar-like.

It explains a lot. It really does.

It explains why I have these “episodes” of extreme motivation for instance, where I just feel so darn inspired to take on the world itself. Conversely, I get those other episodes where I just want to sleep all day, not even bothering to step outside for sunlight.

I seriously hate it. Why can’t I just be one thing? If that were the case, at least then people could say Nhan is just (x) thing.

But nope. I have to go through the entire emotional spectrum. I don’t stop on a dime on any particular feeling. This chemical imbalance just becomes what it feels like, without any rhyme or reason…

This is my life.

This is the life I live with, and sometimes it is suffering.

It is suffering because I actually do have real ambitions. I do have real hopes and dreams that keep me motivated.

However, no matter how legitimately passionate these feelings are for what I want to accomplish, these nagging “off” days are becoming more and more commonplace. They just pop up and yank me back down, delaying this sense of progress and keeping me from truly advancing.

That next stage in life… I just wish this roller coaster would stop by the next phase already.

Until then, I better keep my arms and legs inside the ride at all times…